Return to democratic stability in Brazil will depend on successful center-right party

When João Amoêdo recently announced, on Twitter, his decision to leave the Novo Party, which he had himself founded a decade earlier, the parallels with Bernd Lucke’s decision to quit the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) a few years earlier were striking. 

Both men had sought to establish conservative, pro-market, and slightly anti-establishment outfits. But both parties soon attracted more radical anti-democratic elements which ended up pushing out moderates like Messrs. Amoêdo and Lucke. 

When Mr. Lucke quit AfD in 2015, he explained that he was no longer willing to be used as a moderate cover for a grouping that had begun to embrace authoritarian rhetoric and flirt with the far-right. In the same way, Mr. Amoêdo lambasted the Novo outfit and accused it of attacking the pillars of the republic and “stimulating anti-democratic actions.” 

In recent years, Novo has largely become a pro-Jair Bolsonaro group and fiercely criticized Mr. Amoêdo for reluctantly supporting center-left leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s October presidential runoff. 

More importantly, Novo congressmen such as Marcel van Hattem called, in the aftermath of Mr. Bolsonaro’s defeat, for the establishment of a congressional hearings committee to investigate the country’s electoral authority, echoing Mr. Bolsonaro’s conspiracy theories about the integrity of Brazil’s elections. 

Mr. van Hattem notably participated in...